September 1, 2015 – A team of Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers — Jack Schryver, James Nutaro and Mallikarjun Shankar — has produced an agent-based simulation model for behaviors critical to the progression of diabetes type 2. This research approximates essential findings from a complex model of diabetes progression over an aggregated U.S. population. The ORNL model offers a more compact explanation of the disease progression in an effort to understand which factors in the original study best explain the trend of the disease in the United States. Factors in the ORNL models include age, obesity and other health-related human behaviors. The study provides increased understanding of how specific demographics behaviors and social mechanisms could affect disease and healthcare progression.
